The Eclipse is announced as “exquisitely crafted supernatural drama,” which it may arguably be except for the “supernatural.” Yes, there are four apparitions -- one too far to be identified, a brief child who looks to have a slight harelip, a deceased wife and her pustule-pocked father – plus dialogue and books about such phenomena, but the eighty-eight minutes could as easily stand without them.

Indeed, the ghosts may be of the mind’s making, as in one reading of The Turn of the Screw. No one sees or hears them aside from Michael Farr (Ciarán Hinds), although London author Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle), whose latest spooky thriller is The Eclipse, recounts seeing one as an eleven-year-old on holidays with her parents.

The specters come out only when Michael is alone, and an obvious interpretation is that they are his personal nightmares, the hangover of grief and survivor’s guilt from the 2006 natural death of wife Eleanor. Coping with loss while continuing his job as a woodworking shop teacher, single-parenting eleven- and fourteen-year-old Thomas and Sarah (Eanna Hardwicke, Hannah Lynch), and minding a father-in-law (Jim Norton, as Malachy) complainingly in an old-age home, may have overloaded his mind. He lies for no clarified reason to Lena about his wife’s final resting place, but one senses -- or hopes -- that he is not dangerous and that a nicely non-committal ending does not point to sicko trouble ahead.

Dublin director Conor McPherson co-wrote with Billy Roche, here widowing the married-with-children protagonist of the latter’s story “Table Manners.” Michael himself once wrote stories and “some bloody terrible poetry” but has long channeled writer’s itch into serving as volunteer gofer-driver for the literary festival at Irish seaside Cobh. Its eleventh annual edition has landed a big fish in heavy-drinking man-about-town popular novelist Nicholas Holden (Aidan Quinn). Before that star’s turn, however, Michael chauffeurs Lena to the house assigned her some distance from town.

In a human touch of forgivable vanity, the woman quickly adds that she has had “a few offers” although never married because “I’m a disaster.” She and Michael grow closer, both believing in ghosts, she (later) appreciative of his writing, and he of her festival talk around “when you see a ghost, reality is collapsed and reconfigured.”

The title of movie and her book has nothing discernible to do with this romance in an admittedly gothicky stone town in County Cork with cemeteries and bare ruined choirs. Complication and competition arrive with blustery Nicholas, whose self-referential talk and interview are thinly disguised book-sales promotion, though his main target is the Lena he expects to fall into his arms again.

SPOILER ALERT

The two writers had a quickie somewhere, which she would as soon forget and bury there in the past. Sex is stranger than liking, perhaps, but it strains credulity that she could have slept with such an egotistical bore and womanizer -- for the moment, he finds small consolation with waitress Iris -- and swallowed his unhappy marriage line. Nicholas’ wounded pride, refusal to understand any part of no, and even a rapid heartbeat will be played off against self-effacing Michael.

One of the two pairings is resolved, the other left ambiguous in, for once, attraction or love with no artsy nude writhing. Spurred by a voicemail from the capital, that open ending may be taken as release to a new beginning. Or, if “embellished by the supernatural” or the psychotic, it might be the door to terror.

However, the mostly solo piano score, with interludes of Latin choral song (the Mornington Singers), is peaceful and probably indicative that ghosts and inner demons are laid to rest. “A nowhere movie,” commented an unimpressed viewer; but grown-ups’ emotion need not be a torment but, instead, a gradual outgrowth from shared belief.

(Released by Magnolia Pictures and rated "R" for language and some disturbing images.)